Mark Donadio Movies
Nicole Beharie, Tim Blake Nelson, Will Patton, and Xzibit headline this fact-based drama about an innocent Texas mother caught up in a high-profile drug raid, and unjustly accused due to the uncorroborated testimony of a single informant. Dee Roberts (Beharie) is a young single mother of four living in a small Texas town. Arrested during a drug raid and accused of a crime she didn't commit, Dee goes against the wishes of her mother, Alma (Alfre Woodard), and rejects the plea-bargain that would free her from jail, but brand her as a felon for life. As word begins to spread that similar incidents are occurring in poor communities all across the country, Dee realizes that there are more mothers out there like her, and decides to take a stand against powerful district attorney Calvin Beckett (Michael O'Keefe). Now, despite being well aware of District Attorney Beckett's fierce reputation, Dee enlists the aid of ACLU attorney David Cohen (Nelson) and former narcotics officer Sam Conroy (Patton) in overcoming the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that, if not navigated with the greatest of caution, now threaten to destroy her life. With the custody of her children on the line, one brave mother wages a valiant battle to strike at the very heart of the corrupt Texas justice system. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nicole Beharie, Tim Blake Nelson, (more)
A group of returning vacationers boards a late-night shuttle bound for home, but soon finds their journey taking a dark turn in this tale of terror from writer/director Edward Anderson. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peyton List, Cameron Goodman, (more)
A young man struggles to grow up with principles as his family begins to self-destruct around him in this coming of age drama. Cole McKay (Michael Angarano) is a boy in his middle-teens growing up in an Irish-Catholic family in Boston. While Cole has dreams of playing major league baseball some day, his parents Desmond (Brendan Gleeson) and Margaret (Melissa Leo) are blind to his ambitions, and his older brother Terry (Tom Guiry) is a petty criminal who is unwittingly drawing Cole into his orbit. While Margaret is obsessed with projecting an image that the McKay family are happy and God-fearing folk, Desmond has been sinking deeper into depression ever since he lost his job, and his marriage is slowly but surely falling apart. The family's pride takes a body blow when Cole's teenage sister Kathleen (Emily Van Camp) discovers she's pregnant, but Cole decides it's time he took on some adult responsibilities, and gets himself a part-time job at a restaurant. Black Irish was the first directorial effort for screenwriter Brad Gann. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brendan Gleeson, Michael Angarano, (more)
Longtime actor/songwriter Kris Kristofferson stars as a whiskey-smuggling schemer desperate to preserve his endangered cattle herd in director Jay Craven's adaptation of Howard Frank Mosher's best-selling novel. The year is 1932; Prohibition is still in place, and smuggling whiskey has long been a profitable tradition in the Bonhomme family. When the coming winter threatens to decimate Quebec Bill Bonhomme's (Kristofferson) cattle heard and render his family destitute, the desperate dreamer and reluctant whiskey runner finally decides to carry on the family tradition. With his 14-year-old son, Wild Bill (Charlie McDermott), in tow, Quebec Bill sets out on a wild ride through Vermont's sprawling Northeast Kingdom that will expose the age-old mysteries of the Bonhomme family to the cold light of winter, and serve as an unforgettable rite of passage for the young adolescent currently teetering on the cusp of manhood. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kris Kristofferson, Lothaire Bluteau, (more)
- 2005
- PG13
Thirty years after realizing that they had they had both found that rare once in a lifetime love, a man and a woman separated by fate decide to take a second shot at romance despite the fact that both had moved on with their lives a long time ago. As children growing up together in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, Mark and Sara were inseparable. As teens it just seemed that the two adolescents were just really close friends, but when Mark's family moves to New Orleans in the early 1970s the letters that he and Sarah exchange reveal that their true feelings for one another run far deeper. Though their love is vividly expressed in a pair of intensely heartfelt letters, any chance for romance is effectively destroyed when Mark's meddling mother Carole (Brooke Adams) intercepts the letters and hides them from her son. Mistakenly believing that each has rejected the other's love, Mark and Sara both manage to move on with their lives despite their initial devastation. Years later, Mark and Sara are both in their forties, living in different cities and locked in unhappy marriages - Mark to a career-driven psychiatrist named Laura (Jessica Hecht) and Sara to struggling alcoholic named Chris (Michael Arata). Mark feels like his life has become hollow, and spends the majority of his time confiding his true feelings in his older brother Earl (M.C. Gainey), an eccentric French Quarter artist. But one day, when Mark discovers the letters that had been hidden by his mother, he sees the opportunity for a new life of happiness and contacts Sara to tell her the truth. The moment the two make contact, it's as if they were both transported back to that special time when nothing else mattered aside from their growing feelings for one another. Neither Mark nor Sara are particularly happy with the way their lives have turned out, and excitedly make plans to rendezvous in New Orleans. Could it be that Mark and Sara were truly meant to be with one another, or did their one chance at a lifetime of happiness actually end with the hiding of those passionate correspondences so many moons ago? ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Martin Donovan, Kelly Lynch, (more)
One family comes face-to-face with the forces of the unknown in this supernatural thriller based on actual events. On April 14, 1755, something terrible happened to Lucy Keyes in the forest surrounding Wachusett Mountain. 250 years later, Guy (Justin Theroux) and Joanne Cooley (Julie Delpy) move their family into an 18th century farmhouse at the foot of the mountain to escape the city, and recover from the death of their youngest child to SIDS. It seemed like the perfect place to get a fresh start and raise their two young daughters Molly and Lucy. Upon discovering that the Keyes family had occupied the farmhouse at the time of their daughter's death, Joanne begins having strange dreams, and hearing haunting cries coming from the woods. After finding a letter admitting to the murder of Lucy Keyes, Joanne becomes convinced that Martha and Lucy Keyes' spirits are attempting to contact her in hopes that she can set them free from their earthly limbo, and begins to fear that their grieving mother plans to claim Lucy Cooley as a substitute for her own missing daughter. As Guy attempts to convince the townspeople to approve construction of a wind farm project that he's currently working on, his wife's sanity begins to slip and their marriage starts to falter. Joanne's attempt to expose the truth about Lucy Keyes' disappearance only leads to greater terror, however, when the townspeople turn on the family, and young Lucy Cooley vanishes into the woods one cold and windy night. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Julie Delpy, Justin Theroux, (more)
Award-winning actor Tony Shalhoub adds the "director" hyphenate to his calling card with this labor of love, starring his wife, Brooke Adams, and written by his sister-in-law, Lynne Adams. Made-Up lightly parodies the reality-TV "makeover" craze as it tells the tale of Elizabeth (Brooke Adams), a middle-aged divorcée who agrees to be made over by her daughter Sara (Eva Amurri), a process which will be documented for eternity by her aspiring-filmmaker sister, Kate (Lynne Adams). A former actress still smarting over her long-since faded stardom, Elizabeth is none too pleased at having her transformation videotaped, but she goes along with it, and soon finds that her "new you" is winning over the affections of a new beau, restaurateur Max (Shalhoub). But self-doubt continues to nag at Elizabeth, to the point where she almost undermines her own chances at romance. Lynne Adams based her screenplay on her own one-woman play; Gary Sinise makes an appearance as Elizabeth's ex-husband. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brooke Adams, Lynne Adams, (more)
Writer/director Brad Anderson, known for whimsical romantic comedies like Next Stop, Wonderland, was inspired by the astonishing, creepy visage of an abandoned mental hospital in Danvers, MA, to make the intense psychological horror film Session 9. The film stars the redoubtable Scottish actor Peter Mullan (from Ken Loach's My Name Is Joe) as Gordon Fleming, a new father struggling to keep his asbestos removal company afloat. Desperate to bring in some money, the normally deliberate and careful Gordon gets the contract by promising that his company can clear out the creepy deserted building in a week's time. Assisted by his right-hand man, Phil (David Caruso), Gordon hires a crew and, pressed by the nearly impossible deadline, gets the hazardous work underway. But each man on the crew harbors a dangerous secret, and it's only a short time before the haunted atmosphere of the asylum -- where cruel and primitive means were used to control unstable patients -- begins to work its dark spell on them. Session 9 was one of the first feature films shot using Sony's 24P HD video, which shoots at 24 frames per second, like film, as opposed to the 30 frames per second of conventional video. The filmmakers used the same camera that George Lucas would later use to film Star Wars: Episode II. Using this technology, Anderson and director of photography Uta Briesewitz were able to produce the uniquely effective, deep-focus images in Session 9 using mostly natural light. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Mullan, David Caruso, (more)
- 1998
- NR
Ron Burrus directed this low-budget romantic comedy, set in Boston. The lead role of Bostonian Christopher DiMarco is portrayed by Michael Landes (Jimmy Olson on Lois & Clark). After a blackout, the tux-clad Chris regains consciousness on the porch of a beachfront summer cottage, where he encounters attractive zoologist Melissa (Hedy Burress) and her annoying roomie Liz (Dina Spybey). Chris and Melissa become a twosome, but bad advice from his divorced pal Peter (Lenny Clarke) and intrusions by Liz lead Chris on a downward spiral. After another blackout, he seeks therapy from Dr. Maddie (Lane Smith), and long-lost, buried secrets are soon excavated. Shown at the 1998 Seattle Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Landes, Hedy Burress, (more)
An independent romantic comedy, Next Stop, Wonderland (1998) made headlines at the Sundance Film Festival when it became the object of a bidding war, ultimately won by Miramax Pictures to the tune of $6 million. Hope Davis stars as Erin Castleton, a night-shift nurse who's cruelly dumped by her boyfriend Sean (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a political activist. When her mother Piper (Holland Taylor) places a wildly inaccurate personals ad in the local paper, Erin is at first enraged, but then becomes curious. After she dates a variety of men who are all wrong for her, she meets Andre (Jose Zuniga), a handsome Brazilian music expert who invites her to Sao Paulo. Although Erin likes Andre, her Mr. Right is actually Alan Monteiro (Alan Gelfant), a plumber she's never met, though the two keep crossing paths. Trying to break out of his working class existence, Alan is studying marine biology but is indebted to a local mob boss, who wants him to kidnap a star blowfish from the local aquarium. Actress Taylor, the real-life aunt of co-writer, editor and director Brad Anderson, also appeared in his next film, Happy Accidents (1999). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hope Davis, Alan Gelfant, (more)
- 1994
In this interesting a film, set 500 years before Columbus came to the New World, a culture clash ensues between a European man and an Indian tribe in New England. The story is based upon the legend of a Celtic slave aboard a Viking ship visiting North America who explores the new land. In the film, that slave is Kilian who after his capture by Norsemen, longs to win his freedom and go home. He instead finds himself marooned and dying of a snake-bite on the New England shores. He is rescued by a local tribe. He gradually learns their language and culture while trying not to fall in love with Turtle, a young native. Kilian feels great conflict as he tries to decide whether it is better to remain there, or attempt to return to Ireland. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Christopher Johnson, Robert McDonough, (more)
- 1992
This feature is a curiosity rarely before seen: an American production with an American director, shot entirely in Russia with Russian actors and dialogue for both the English and Russian-language markets. In the story, four Russian men have taken temporary summer jobs at a "banya" (a small bathhouse and sauna). For some reason known only to themselves, this enables them to indulge in their fantasy that they are Americans, speaking English much of the time, lip-synching to blues records, and coloring their vodka with tea to make it resemble whiskey. They are having a happy-go-lucky time when their idyll is interrupted by the appearance of a 100% genuine American woman, who is up to her elbows in some very shady business deals. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Valery Sergeev
